Read Online Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel by Lyn Benedict - Free Book Online

pattern made in the shadows of filmed blood.
    Sylvie continued thinking aloud. “If they’ve organized enough to make alliances, then why not strike all at once? Why strike day by day? Allowing the ISI to warn their other branches? It’s pointless. And worse, it’s ineffective. The
Mundi
’s a lot of things, but it’s brutally efficient.”
    “Fear,” Alex said, running her fingers over the keyboard, over the part of the world she could control. “Let them know what’s coming and let them know they can’t stop it. I mean,
can
they stop it?”
    “I don’t know,” Sylvie said. Grimaced. Goddammit. She wanted answers. She wanted them now. “Maybe it’s not awar. Maybe it’s revolution. A series of uprisings, each spurred on by the previous one.”
    “Like an infection, spreading.” Alex bent her head over the computer. “What can we do?”
    Sylvie closed her teeth on another
I don’t know
, and thought about it. “If it’s an infection, there’ll be a cause. If there’s an uprising, there’s a leader somewhere. Keep plugged in. Keep me informed. I got someplace to be.”
    “Chicago?”
    Sylvie shook her head. “And do what? Pick through the rubble and hope I strike lucky? If they even let me get that far? No. If he can, Demalion will call us.”
    Alex raised her head for the first time in what seemed like ages. Her eyes seemed more shadowed now than when Sylvie had first woken her. “Let me guess. Four ISI agencies down. You’re headed for ground zero. Trying to see if you can get yourself killed protecting people who hate you.”
    “Sounds bad when you put it that way,” Sylvie said.
    Alex’s smile was perfunctory. “They gassed you, kidnapped you; you had to break out. If they weren’t so scared of your pet Fury, you’d be back in their cells. But you’re going to take the moral high ground and help them?”
    “Miami might not even be next on the list,” Sylvie said, “Seems to me, though, that there’s a path being taken. From Savannah? There are two ISI offices in easy lines: DC and Miami. DC has its own building, but here, the ISI offices are in the hotel district. The ISI brought this on themselves but … there are too many innocent bystanders involved. Riordan does it deliberately, hedges his agents ’round with regular people. One floor of agency, fourteen floors of civilians. I don’t have a choice.”
    Sylvie left Alex hunched over her laptop, one hand snarled into her short, wild hair, the other clicking through screens that opened and closed with such rapidity that it might as well be arcane magic that guided her. She hoped it was comforting.
    Outside, out of Alex’s sight, Sylvie’s shoulders sagged. Her bravado faded. The nighttime air, hot and still, feltcharged, electric with change. With chaos. The peace before disaster.
    Her tongue felt dry and heavy in her mouth, choking her with the weight of all the anxious words she couldn’t say. It tasted of cooling asphalt, unsweetened by the jasmine nearby.
    Her phone was in her hand again, Demalion’s number picked out. She closed the phone without pressing SEND .
    Wondered, if he were dead, who would tell her? Not the ISI, who hadn’t connected Adam Wright with Sylvie Lightner. Maybe Adam Wright’s ex-wife would get the call. Maybe then she’d call Sylvie to pass the news on, that the man who’d taken over her husband’s body had lost his own hold on it in the end.
    Most likely, it would be Alex, hunting through the casualty roster, refusing to tell her over the phone. Sylvie would have to watch Alex picking the careful words, trying to be gentle, while her face telegraphed every detail. She scrubbed a quick hand across her eyes.
    Cowardice,
her little dark voice said.
To give up before the battle’s even joined.
    Sylvie let its contempt steady her. It was right. It so often was. Older and wiser than she was. That genetic leftover from Lilith’s blood. As if Sylvie’s synapses occasionally fired in a different